Mold and Water Damage with Eric Blanco from Dry Guys

This is episode number 264 of The Homeowner Show. Whether you're DIY or looking to hire, we're here to help you find the best information and options for you and your home. My name is Kevin Hackett, and here with me is Craig Williams.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to The Homeowner Show. We're so glad you could join us for another live episode here in the studio. How you doing, Kev?

Man, I am— ah, dude, I'm so good right now.

Yeah?

It was just a really, really good weekend, man. Like, I— we, we were, uh, we were camping this fall. Sorry, I'm adjusting them.

No, make me look pretty.

Well, that's why I've got to make some adjustments. A lot, I would imagine. No, we— I mean, we just got back from, from camping Huntsville State Park, and, uh, there's there's very few things that I enjoy more. Like, if— so we, we bought a camper many, many— well, actually, it's a long story. We've had a camper for a long, long time, and memories are made at campgrounds and around families. And just, man, it's just been really, really good.

Yeah.

So yeah, I'm just— I'm glad to to have some, some time away. It's kind of re-energizing, all that kind of stuff. So man, we just got back today. It's been good. So that's what's going on with me. How are you?

I'm good, man. I'm excited for our guest tonight. We've got Eric Blanco from, from Dry Guys, uh, a subject we actually haven't been able to talk about yet, right?

Um, oddly enough.

I know. So, um, so we're excited about that one. I have, I have 2 stories I've got to get out of the way. One I texted you about late last night.

Yes. And whenever you texted me, it was just kind of funny. I was like, oh, man. And then the second text, I just died laughing.

I forget what I even said in the text, honestly, but it was funny.

Let us in. What'd you say?

Well, I can pull it up. Let's see here. What did I say to Kevin? Oh, I just texted him and I said there's a dead armadillo under the studio. So he was—he was like dead, like pretty much where you're sitting right now. Oh, okay.

And my—and my response was ah yuck! Oh no, yuck! Yuck!

Yucky!

I responded to that by saying it's not entirely his fault. I did shoot him. Followed by a bahahaha.

Yeah, yeah, yes.

So I got up this morning and I was like, uh, yeah, that was really cool that I got to shoot that armadillo because he's been destroying my yard for the last 2 weeks. Okay. I tried catching him, but—

I really only see dead armadillos. I don't really see them alive that often.

Pretty much the only package they come in these days. Um, but yeah, I got up this morning and I was like, that stupid armadillo is dead underneath that building. He's gonna be stinking in the next couple of days. Yeah. So I got up this morning and we were doing some chores around the property and my son came outside And I said, come here, son, got a little job for you. And I said, here's the deal. There's a dead armadillo underneath the studio. There's $20 in it for you if you go underneath there and drag him out. He was out of there by 10 a.m., dude.

And now, now, granted, this is the child that has said, Daddy, when I get older, I'm going to do what you do.

Oh, yeah.

So that's— he's in. He's all in.

It's pretty wild to say at that age.

He's 10, by the way.

Did you say that?

No, no. Like my, my famous This line that I tell everybody about this business. I told my dad to go to hell till I was like 27 years old.

Right.

Like, I didn't want anything to do with it. And mostly because I was an idiot.

Right.

Thinking I could— like, it was better for me to try and go do, like, my own thing.

Yeah. Keep your silly pest control business.

Yeah. Like, this, this lucrative, very profitable business.

You get your art degree and we're gonna be fine.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So speak— speaking of that, I got some dirty laundry to air. Oh.

I cannot wait. Yeah. This is gonna be good.

If you've been watching the show any amount of time, you know that I own a pest control company. The name of the— and I'm gonna tell you the name of the company because it's relevant to the story. The name of the company is Excalibur Pest Control. We typically don't talk about that on the show because we're not here to promote us. Correct. The reason I'm telling you is because we got a 1-star review on Google. Oh. Now, our business has been around about 40 years. We don't chase reviews. Like, we've got a steady like, stable of clientele that we've acquired over the years. Like, we're— the business, the business is doing pretty good.

You're— you— yeah.

So this woman, who I'm going to out, her name is Alicia Graffaldo.

Wow.

And she is a real estate agent at Redfin. So you can look her up. She has pretty good reviews.

Ours are better.

She calls us and says, oh my gosh, there's something in between the floors of my house. Can someone get out here just as quickly as possible to check things out?

Okay.

And so, like, we go, absolutely. Just by the way, there's gonna be a service call for us to come out there and take a peek. We're gonna do everything we can. Any work that we do is gonna be applied to that service call. Um, and she agrees. And so I the owner of the company, go out because it's not en route with anything that we have going on over the next couple of days. So it's only fair to send me.

Sure.

If it's like, please come help me. And so she, she plays the single mom card. She plays the, the woman in distress and begs us to come out. So we come out as quickly. I think we're there within like the next 24 to 48 hours.

That's pretty good.

Okay. So I get there and do, like, a thorough inspection of this property. I walk her through— I walk the entire exterior of the property. I go through the interior of the property and the attic. I'm there about an hour.

Okay.

Right? And she shows— she's walking me around, and she's showing me stuff that she's already done. She knows it's a squirrel. She just doesn't know where it's coming and going. She found a spot where it's coming and going, and she just filled it with foam, and it looked terrible.

This is her house?

Her house.

Okay.

Yeah. And I'm like, oh, okay, well, that, that'll work. Um, so we got him there. We just need to figure out where else he could be going, or we just need to figure out if he trapped him in the house.

Right.

So I go through the entire attic.

Right.

And I find a place in the attic where it could be coming and going. It was one of those old attic vents, and people usually put like wire mesh on the back side of it to keep stuff from coming inside.

Yeah.

The house was so old, like the wire mesh had like deteriorated.

Oh. Oh, wow.

So I was like, I was taking pictures for her, and I was like, okay, And so I, I bring all this back to her and I'm like, look, this wire mesh has deteriorated up near the vent. We can replace that for you if you want, or it's something pretty easy if you wanna do it yourself. And I give her the price for that and she's like, oh my gosh, that's so expensive. I'll just get my dad to do it. No problem.

Right.

Just wanted to let you know that's what it was. She also had a small trap up in the attic for catching squirrels.

Okay.

And I was like, great, you already have a trap there. Would it— you want me to just go ahead and set that for you and bait it for you? Would love for you to do that. Could you do that, please? No problem. So I bait the trap, set the trap, walk away from the account.

Right.

I was like— and, and she— and I'd given her the price for the other thing. She said we were too expensive. I'm totally okay with that. Get your dad to do it. I don't care.

Right.

Like, I'm there. And so here's what happened is we sent her a bill, and the bill was $5 more than what she had agreed to over the phone.

Alright.

So she called and let us know.

It's perfectly reasonable.

So we changed it.

Deal. Easy. $5.

Yeah. No big deal. Like, it was, it was just, it was literally a clerical error on our part. We fixed it. Yeah. She pays the bill and then writes this.

Oh, geez.

Here we go.

Oh my goodness.

Paid for the trip charge. They gave no real value on how to remove a squirrel. I have in between the floors of my home. He put some peanuts in a trap I already had and said that would do it. Didn't say that. He was here about 10 to 15 minutes. Not worth the money I paid just to tell me that. So real problem is her grammar. But she just outright lies. I mean, just straight up lies.

15 minutes.

Yeah, there's no way I was only there 10 to 15 minutes. I was there 45 minutes to an hour.

Wow.

Like, it takes me 10 to 15 minutes to get up and back and out of an attic.

Sure.

Especially when I'm up there taking pictures. I had to go all the way to the end.

Yeah.

Like, there's no way I was there 10 to 15 minutes.

Right.

So this lady's just— I mean, she is a scam artist that is just pulling people into her home to get information and then giving bad reviews on Google.

Oh, you see other ones?

Huh? No, you can't look at what other—

Oh, you can't?

I mean, it says that she's given 10 reviews. I mean, I can look up and maybe it's clickable. Let's see.

Well, here, I mean, here's the problem. Like, yeah, if one star— Oh, you found more.

One star, one star. Here's a 4-star. It's some balloon lady.

Okay, she deserved it.

One star.

Yeah, well, I mean, it's balloons.

Yeah. Okay, so like out of the 10 reviews that she's given, 8 of them are 1 stars.

Alrighty.

Goodness.

One of them's a 2 star. The rest are 4 stars.

Come on now. And then, okay.

Like, here's the thing. Like, this is a dumb real estate agent. I don't think she knew who she was messing with either. Yeah.

Right.

Like, she didn't know that, like, this— oh, this guy might have a show that could actually talk about me. Like, no. This is a person who goes online intentionally just to say crappy things about people's businesses. This is— this is— this is, like, not smart behavior on behalf of a real estate agent. Sure. You want to partner with businesses, right? And like, the reason—

especially businesses that are going— that can feed you more business. Yes. Because pest control, like pest control, HVAC, a lot of these places that like are your— are, are common things you have to take care of during, you know, these types of transactions.

So, uh, you know, for everyone out there that might be shopping for a home in Kingwood, Let me tell you who not to call. What's her name again? Alicia Graffaldo.

Oh, Alicia Graffaldo.

Be happy to link that up, right? So, wow. And she has some, uh, she does have 7 active listings. Um, all of them look overpriced. Imagine that. But she speaks Spanish. Oh, so anyway, bilingual. She could screw you in 2 languages.

That's right. That is frustrating.

Anyway, but the reason she called us is because we have outstanding reviews. Like, sure, people love us, right?

Yeah, we, we can, uh, take care of your rodent problems. Yeah, and we do.

Well, that's a— that's the thing that bugs me is like no real value. Well, no, I, I offered you the value, right? Like, this is what I can do, and I did a bunch of stuff for free, right?

That's the most frustrating thing about it is it's, it's basically a service call. Yeah, yeah, you— it's the— it's probably the lowest thing y'all have on y'all's menu.

It is, it is.

Yeah, it's the most basic you could do. It's, it's what it sounds like, setting and baiting a trap, you know? I mean, there's not— I mean, don't get me wrong, it's not a whole lot there, right? I mean, that she just wanted the bare minimum.

That's— yeah, I mean, she wanted me to— she wanted, like, honestly, from our interaction, what she wanted me to do is she wanted me to tell her how to do it so she wouldn't have to pay me, right, to do anything else other than just be there.

Yeah.

Which I did. You know, it's like, hey, like, we— catching squirrels is not super easy. Like, people want you to do it because they think it's nice. The easiest way to get rid of them is to exclude them. Like, stop them from coming in.

Right.

And then if you trap them inside, it's way easier to catch them. They're, they're just not lureable.

Right.

That— I mean, they, they are, but, like, not as easy as, like, a possum or a raccoon or something like that.

So let's talk about this for a minute because I think that this is important.

Yes.

I mean, We— this show, if, if you're listening to this show right now, you're either a business owner that just enjoys the content.

Uh-huh.

Right? Or you're a homeowner, which is our, our target audience. Okay. So if you are a homeowner and you call a person out, right, who is a contractor to do anything, it doesn't really matter what they're doing. Um, it, it could be a plumber. Hey, I've got a clog. Come check this out for me, please. Can you tell me what's going on? It doesn't matter what it is. They're going to charge you for the call. Let me give you a perfect example. The other day, um, my mother-in-law, she tells me, hey, the zero-turn lawnmower won't start.

Right.

I'm like, all right, what's going on with it? She was like, I don't know. It will— it tries to start and it will not turn over.

Right.

I was like, all right. She said, I got a friend who's gonna come over and check it out. Friend comes over, he checks it out, does not— cannot get it to start either. And I— and she was like, do you want to try? I was like, why? Like, I mean, I can try, sure, but like, I don't know that it mat— I mean, 2 people who know what they're doing, it's her lawnmower. Like, I, I, I'd never ridden a— I'd never even used a zero-turn before she showed up at my house. Now I, now I love them.

No, they are fantastic.

But yeah, I can't go back.

I'm like, this is— yeah, I'm like, but that's—

I'm like, no, I don't, I don't need to test this, right? 2 competent people have done it. So I said, tell you what, the guy that's come out to do some work on it before, let's call him back. So he comes out, um, I kid you not, he pulls it out of the, uh, little shed that it's in, right? and turns it on.

Yeah.

Oh, turns it on?

Yeah.

And I'm like, what'd you do? And he goes, I turned it on. And I was like—

Probably took it out of gear.

Yeah, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, something, something.

Zero turns have like different like little things that are different from like a regular riding lawnmower. It won't even turn over, right? You know?

Yeah, you have to have every setting right. Yeah, every bar's gotta be in the right thing.

And there's safety things that they, that they build into them. But sure.

But yeah, it's like, it was worth it, right?

So, so he, he literally like starts it and he looks at me and he was like, I don't know, man. Like, I, I don't know what I did. I just turned it on, right? And, and he, he gets on it and like goes and mows a swath over here. Yeah. Brings it back and he goes, I think it's fine. And I was like, I think it's fine too. How much do I owe you?

Yep.

And he said, it's just $65 for the, for the service call. I'm like, yep.

Yeah.

That's what I owe you.

That's what you get.

Yeah. Now that's what I get.

Yeah.

That's exactly— it does not matter. If you call a contractor out, they've got time invested.

Yeah.

They've got money invested because they're paying for gas, right? Whatever it is, if they do nothing while they're there, yeah, you removed them from making money somewhere else.

Yep.

You owe them a service call. Like, the service is a convenience, right?

Yeah.

You— now, most contractors that I know are going to roll that into the service.

Yep.

Right? Like you just said, if you use my services, that service fee goes away. It goes away, basically.

Yeah, we're not adding it on.

Right. Yeah. And so, but I just, I want everyone to understand, like, there is no contractor out there scamming you out of a service fee whenever you made the call. Not only that, this person said it was urgent. Yes. Like, have to be here immediately, which means in my mind, You have work to do whenever you get there, but whenever you get there, all of a sudden your prices are too high. What are you gonna do if this is that urgent and it took you within, you know, 24, 48 hours to get there? That urgent, what are you gonna do, wait on the next person another 24 to 48 hours if they're that quick? So now you've got maybe up to 4

days invested in this. How urgent is it?

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Well, and here's, here's one of the other things that bothers me about the one is One is just the outright lie that I was only there 10 to 15 minutes.

Yeah.

I mean, which— I mean, it's just a blatant lie.

Right.

Okay? Like, the rest of it's sort of subjective.

Okay.

Right?

Sure.

Like, like, if she didn't feel like I added value, fine.

Right.

But one of the things that I always do when I leave someone's home is I always ask them, hey, is there anything else I can do for you?

Yeah.

You know? And if you say no to that question, it's like, no, thank you. It's been great. Right. Which is what she told me.

Yeah. No, it's a good question to ask right as soon as you get out. We say something similar.

So, but like, if you're unhappy with it, like, tell me then. Right. I'll fix it. Right. But like, you go to the internet and give me a 1-star review. Yeah. One based off of complete nonsense and a lie. Right. But then off of like, hey, I even asked, like, anything else I can do for you? Sure. After I done more than what I should have been doing.

Right.

From the get-go, which was just diagnostic.

Yeah.

You know, because she didn't want me to do anything. I offered to do some stuff. And, and then, you know, and so, like, one of the things that we, we come across a lot doing this show is, you know, Eric, guys like you that wish that there was some sort of, like, recourse when people do this kind of stuff to them.

Right.

You know, and, and the problem is, is you don't want to do it because if you make them mad, then they'll just come back at you. Right. I'm just kind of at the place now where I'm just kind of— I, I don't care. Like, she can come at me all she wants.

I've kind of seen it from every angle too. You could write an angrier reply to the review. That doesn't seem to help.

It doesn't. It doesn't. It doesn't help at all. It makes you— it makes you seem petty. It does. You know, but like, what I— what I want people to, to understand is like, just because it's written on a review on Google doesn't mean that it's true. Right. Compare it to everything else that you see. Yep. You know, because, like, if you're, if you're someone like me who doesn't go chasing reviews, right, I don't, I don't have that many reviews, but I'm way bigger than some of the companies that have, like, 500 reviews. Right. Sure. And so, like, it's— you're not comparing apples to apples.

Yeah. I think even people are starting to become kind of privy to that, right? Yeah. Oh, 1,000 5-star reviews or 100 perfect reviews. Yeah, something's up here, right? And I feel like it's also, you know, people are just more likely to leave 1-star reviews than say anything because we ask the same thing before we're done with any job. Do you have any questions, comments, or concerns? And that's 3 different questions right there. So if anything should be able to fit in those, so to see a bad review after that, yeah, like what in the world?

Oh, it's a coward.

I know you talk, you are mostly a homeowner show, but it's like kind of, I feel like people do this with restaurants where If their meat is cooked the wrong temperature, they won't send it back. They will leave them a bad review. Right. And just sit there.

And like, they want to fix it.

Yeah, sure. They would much rather fix that baked potato than get a bad review and lose customers. Right. Yeah. Give them a chance. Right. But in your situation, well, not even, not even an option. You didn't even mess up the baked potato.

No. So, and I don't, I don't even think she would dispute that. Right. I mean, like, if we were to get her on the phone and be like, hey, like, what actually happened? Like, you know, I wasn't there 10:50. You know that I didn't give you no value. I answered lots of questions. I walked every step with you, held your hand through this whole thing and really tried to help even though you didn't wanna do the things that I told you that you needed to do.

Right. It'd be—

That's not on me.

Really intriguing for the podcast if you could get her on the phone on the next episode.

She would never do it. She'd never do it. We'll do it. If she wants to do it, we'll do it. Yeah. Bring her. Yeah. I mean, I'll, I'll be happy to have that conversation.

Sure. It'd be amazing.

And she might wanna do it just to, like, you know.

Yeah. But you know what? Here's the thing. I mean, the truth of the matter is, it, it, it, it, my advice in those moments would be do not go and say, you know, how dare you on a review reply. Obviously. But I do think you can, you could say something like, I'm sorry that you felt this way. Give us a call. We will take care of whatever issue, whatever, right? Like, you can, you can say something that goes— whoever else looks at this goes, no, no, we, we did go above and beyond to make this okay. The other thing I would tell you, man, just bury it with other people's reviews, you know?

Yeah.

Like, she— one, one-star reviews are just, they're just opportunities for you to go, you know what, I need other people to leave me reviews. So you start asking for them. Like, Just— you just bury it, you know?

Yeah. Well, so, like, here's my thing is, yes, normally I would do that. But honestly, she pissed me off.

Oh, yeah. I understand.

And so I, like, I want— I want to, like, I wanna take one for the team, so to speak, so that other businesses know that you can stand up to these freaking bullies who are trying to attack you through the internet and ruin your business.

Right.

Like, she's not doing anything to my business.

No.

Like, no one, no one's read that review and believed that any of what she said is true.

No.

But the fact that she had the audacity to do it without the truth.

Sure.

Like, that, that's what I'm calling out. That's what makes me mad.

Right.

And so, like, I just wanna call it out. I wanna call a spade a spade. Sure. And, and, and just let people know, like, look, you, you can call these people out. And, and it just made me mad because she was really, really nice to me while I was there. Yes. And like, it was like appreciative and thankful and thanked me up and down. And I don't know if it like the, the, the price change just really like threw her off or something and made her mad.

That's $5.

Yeah.

I didn't know if you fix it.

Which we fixed. Sure. And apologized for. Yeah. You know, it's like, hey, sorry, like miscommunication, clerical error. We fixed it.

Yeah.

We weren't trying to like gouge her. Like, we don't need $5. No. You know, it's like, it was fine.

Yeah, no doubt.

And so my office staff was like, we're never sending you out on one of those again. Because I'm the one, like, usually my staff tells me, like, look, you don't have to go. And, like, I want to go. I like taking care of people.

Sure.

And so, like, I'm the one in the office that pressed and said, no, put it on my schedule.

I'll make—

and it was a day where I was off. Oh, you know, it was like the only thing I had going. Like, I had, I had, you know, stuff planned with my kids and all this other kind of— so like, she just pissed me off. Yeah. You know, because she— I feel like at this point she took advantage of me and then, and then tried to like harass me online. And I don't even know what she's expecting us to do.

She— I mean, who does she think she is? She's not the first woman that's taken advantage of you.

Right, exactly.

So let's just be honest.

Well, then willing on the other ones.

So seems like she got her rights violated. Do you think it made it worse that you were there? Because it wasn't like a game of telephone.

Well, that, that, that's the thing.

So you got to see, like, man, what, what, you know?

Yeah. That's the—

None of my texts could have done better than this.

No. Nothing. Yeah. No. That, that, that's the thing is I— she didn't know that I was the owner.

There you go.

And I never play that card with people.

Mhmm.

When I'm, when I'm at their property.

Right.

You know, they sometimes they figure it out, right? You know, either because the person on the phone— some people will call and say, hey, I'd really like to speak to the owner, or I'd really like the owner to come out for this one. Sure. Either because, like, they've heard from a friend through a friend, right, who I am. And so, like, and they're like, well, we want that guy. They don't always get their way, but we try and acquiesce to that. But, you know, This was a situation where she had no clue who I was. And I, I do it that way so that when I get feedback, it's— they're not targeting that feedback. So she, she thought she was dealing with an employee too.

Okay.

Of course.

You know?

Of course.

And, and so, like, there was, there was, there's a certain degree of that where if you're an owner, you recognize that sometimes people do that kinda stuff in order to try and get somebody fired.

No, that's real, you know. Oh, for sure.

And for, for whatever reason, she, you know, took it, took it out on me, um, which again, kind of funny, right?

Um, at this point, um, when we first started our business, uh, me and my brother just started out in the truck. And, uh, one time we got off pretty early that day, we had 3:30. So, um, we had nothing going on that day, so we went and got some tacos and had a margarita. Good day. Lady saw our truck and, uh, called in the phone and my phone rang. Yeah. Hey, I just want to let you know that 2 of your employees are sitting here having a drink and they're clearly supposed to be working. I just kind of turned around. Yeah, I'm the owner. Just kind of hung up.

I'm right here.

Yeah, no, that's me. We're okay here. Yeah. I just kinda like—

It was Tuesday, man.

What a narc.

We have tacos on Tuesday.

That's true.

And we have margaritas with our tacos.

Yeah.

Alright? Like, how do you do it?

We had a big job. I'm a 24/7 business. So sometimes off Tuesday is a Friday.

Sure. Yeah.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, like, Saturdays and Sundays and Friday, they don't all have the same rules every week for me. So it's when I can get it.

Yeah.

Yeah. You know what I mean?

Well, real quick, let everybody know what you do.

Oh, yeah. Hi. I'm Eric Blanco. I'm a driver. 25 minutes into the show, we're getting to you. It's fine, let's go, let's go. I totally forgot. Um, yeah, I'm Eric Blanco. I do, uh, I own Dry Guys Water Damage Solutions, and, uh, what we are is a— we're a full-fledged water and mold restoration company. Um, we are 24/7, um, so that means anybody that experiences any kind of water loss at all, um, obviously there's the big obvious ones like hurricanes and storms. If someone gets flooded, we work with insurance to restore their home back to the conditions it was before. Um, we also deal with a lot of common household leaks. That's honestly how we get through. We're not obviously having hurricanes every couple months,

but—

Thank goodness.

Common household, common household leaks, you know, ACs, water heaters blowing up, and a lot of mold remediation. You know, we do, we do deal with a lot of mold. We're licensed mold contractors. Um, and you know, here in the state of Texas, if it gets a little bit humid in your home or you start to have a beginning of a mold problem, unless you get it taken care of right, it really has the ability to get out of hand quick, which is why there's so many companies like mine. So, sure. That's, that's kind of a basis of what I do.

Do you feel like there's a lot of companies like yours around? I mean, I, I know that, like, there's some, there's a couple of big names.

Right.

That do what you do. We won't mention them here. But, like, I mean, are there a bunch of companies your size like what you do?

Okay. So no. For sure. Okay. No. There's not. There's not.

Does it just, so does it feel like there's a lot because there's a couple of big names that— Yeah. There's a lot of— Take up a lot of that? For sure.

So, you know, there's some big franchises that are very international. And that— you're right, I guess that is most of what I'm competing against.

No, I, I get it, because I mean, we're in the same— yeah, the same boat.

They could be smaller franchises, you know, where they're not a big opera, but you know, they're huge companies all around the world. So yeah, I guess kind of the more local stuff, you definitely don't see as much of that in the restoration industry. I've met a couple guys, you know, yeah, that kind of started up just like us, but it's not— it's not many. It's really— it's most people go the franchise route, which, hey, you know, I might have gone that route if I had a little more starting money.

Well, you know, I think that there's, there's a lot, a lot of questions around that. Like, okay, so there's some big companies out there, right? Which means they've had a lot of success. That, I mean, there's a reason that a company gets large. I mean, they don't get large because they're screwing people and that kind of stuff, right? Like, they're obviously doing some things right, right? But why, why would I go with a smaller business over a larger company? Uh, because in my mind, I'm just like, okay, well, why would I not go with someone who maybe has more experience or something like that? So what, like, what is your elevator pitch, so to speak, of like why you would choose a smaller company over a larger one?

And you know what, I'm not gonna sit here and say every smaller company is better than every—

Oh, I would agree with that.

You can't just say a blanket statement like that. Um, it depends, you know.

You can, it's just not true.

You can, but it's not true. Yeah, I'm not gonna say every smaller company is better, but I mean, if you get a company that cares, right, you know, Bob's Pizza, his name's on the— his name's on the place and he cares. I think it is different than going to a big franchise, you know. Um, I like personally what I've dealt with working at the bigger companies and the smaller companies is sometimes If it's such a machine where, um, you're not connected, we could have multiple divisions in the same company and we not know anything about each other.

Mm-hmm.

Um, even to simple things like going to a house, uh, you call, you get a salesman, the salesman comes out, um, and then he's going to send a technician. And then over the course of the week, you're going to have 3 or 4 more technicians. If you have any questions, you get to talk to an office lady who doesn't know anything about going on about the job. After the job, you could talk to someone else. So you're talking to 7, 8 people for really simple jobs. I see— I've seen a lot of that go on.

And then not only that, you as the homeowner are like, man, I've told this story so many times.

There's nothing worse than having to repeat that over and over. Same company, right? Yep. Yep.

I mean, especially whenever a lot of these— a lot of these calls that you're probably getting— we'll get into some of this, I'm sure— but like a lot of it is like, uh, my kid left the, the water faucet on.

Yeah, we get those. Yeah.

You know, and so, and then, and then it's like you're having to call and be like, yeah, so this happened, so we, we made a mistake. Like, over and over and over and over and over and over. It's just like, why? Yeah, why? You know? Yeah, I get it.

And when I, when I first started, I was definitely, you know, I was in the field you know, doing sales, doing the actual work. So definitely from my point of view, it just, it seemed to make way too much sense to have, you know, um, the guy who's selling— just like in other industries, the guy who's selling the job should probably be project managing this job.

Sure. Yeah, you think so?

The quality control, um, and just kind of being able to focus more on certain projects instead of it's just about time fitting it. Obviously you got to make money, you got to do what you got to do, but when I sign someone, especially, you know, if we're doing a big series mold job, um, that's a lot of our attention in it. And we will turn down stuff if we have big enough projects that needs all of our attention, all hands on deck. Because, uh, to mess— for us to mess up, um, we've really messed up. There's no one after us. If someone's hiring us to do like, like a mold job, for instance, a water restoration job, um, it'll be very obvious if we screw up. they will have problems down the line.

And it's because the mold will come back.

The mold will come back.

Yeah.

Yeah. Um, if you mess up at all on the water restoration side, um, it's, it's honestly very easy to do my job at the bare minimum. It can be. It really can. Uh, you see a lot of storms where, you know, you'll see some roofing companies, they'll grab some restoration equipment, toss it in the house. Yeah. It, you know, sometimes people could think it's really easy And that's how a lot of companies will run it too. Big companies where we pay our guys $15 an hour, toss them in the truck, toss some equipment in the house when there's a big difference between, in any of our jobs, doing it the bare minimum way and the right way.

Mm-hmm.

You know, a lot of what we have to do has to deal with manipulating the environment, controlling the humidity. Um, if you do a couple things wrong and you don't control everything how you're supposed to, um, when you're drying out a house, you could cause it to spread to other areas. and cause secondary damage. You know, that's the main thing we're trying to prevent. So, um, uh, what kind of, what kind of damage can mold do to the house? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, to the structure, if once it eventually gets its little roots in there, it can start to grow pretty, uh, pretty hardcore. So really you're just looking for porous materials, things like wood and sheetrock, living organic things. mold's a living thing.

Yeah.

It wants to grow and make, you know, little mold babies. That's its whole— that's its whole point in going.

Yeah.

So, um, and if you ever look at anything about fungus, you'll see it has little roots like trees.

Yeah.

Mycelium. And once that kind of starts working its way through grains and sheetrock, you can do as much as you want to, but you're not going to get rid of it at that point. It's part of it. Um, you may be able to use a biocide or something like that, but I know a lot of people that put bleach and try to do all these, you know, kind of homemade remedies. It doesn't work. Like bleach, for instance, it's all it does is kill the color, but that's it. Yeah, you're really giving it more water. And the 3 things mold needs is some— a food source, water, and yeah, an organic material, you know. So what is the food source?

Any, any kind of— any organic material, like I said. So wood, anything.

Oh, so wood can actually serve as the As a food source. Okay.

Yeah, wood, sheetrock's a big one. Sheetrock, it loves to eat sheetrock. Um, but things like stone, metal, concrete, you're not gonna have to worry about.

Okay. Rocks, it'll get on them, but you can just wash it off.

If you're gonna see mold on concrete, what you're really seeing is mold growing on top of dust or dirt that's on the concrete, you know what I mean? So stuff like metal, um, it's not actually part of the metal.

Okay.

Yeah, that stuff's real fun too.

Yeah. So, so what do you— what would you say? I mean, because I, I, I can see how most of the time, if, if something happens in your house where you've got water intrusion, right?

Right.

It could be any, like I just mentioned, like a, like a faucet that's overflowed. Mhmm. And I don't know, maybe it's gotten on the, on the floor and all, and all that kinda stuff. I'm, as a homeowner, my first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go get towels, right? I'm gonna sop it up. I'm gonna, you know, get it as dry as I possibly can, right? Um, at what point do I need to call someone to just go, hey, I had something happen over here, right? Could you just come check and make sure I don't have any issues? Is that something that should happen, or Do you wait a period of time until you have a problem? What, what's my protocol here?

Um, well, you know what, I'll say like if someone's having a spill, uh, obviously it's not a big deal if you spill a bottle of water or something like that.

Yeah, like, like I kicked over my dog water bowl, no big deal, whatever.

Yeah, you know, I mean, you might— if you kick over your dog's water bowl every day for 3 months in the same spot on the floor like I have, move the dog water bowl at that point.

Yes, you may ruin You're trying to get PETA on Kevin's case every day, kicking over the water.

Yeah, you got to give your dogs water. That's right.

He's not kicking the dog, people.

Not today.

Um, but honestly, I would say after any, any kind of serious, uh, leak, you know, if your sink overflows, um, water takes the path of least resistance. So if you have a roof leak or something overflows, just because it looks like you see that that's not actually what's going on. All it takes is for one drop of water— I've seen like a roof leak come down, hit a 2x4, and kind of that water go all the way to the other end of the house just because it's at the slightest of an angle or something like that. So I think anytime you're definitely dealing with any plumbing or a roof or anything coming from outside the house, you want to get

someone at least to come take a look, you know.

Yeah.

Getting a water restoration company to come take a look is absolutely worth it because then you know what's going on. Um, you're not always gonna be able to see it with your eyes or feel it with your hands.

Yeah, because I think one of the things that a lot of people don't recognize is— and part of this is just because we, we do a lot of things to cover up imperfections in our home, right? One of them is baseboards. Baseboards are wonderful. They cover up the fact that your flooring doesn't perfectly line up against your wall. Covers more than that. And it just covers up, it covers up a lot of things, right? You never notice it. But like you said, water is gonna— like, most people are not caulking their, their baseboard down to their flooring, right? And so water is just gonna get down under the baseboard, and when it does, it's gonna

go in between the flooring and the wall. And guess what's under that? Like wood, right? Most of the time.

And those are the worst areas, is the dark places you can't see, that's not getting a lot of airflow or a bunch of sunlight. That's where mold likes to grow the best, for sure. Um, like a little example, there's a guy I know— if you're listening, shout out— um, he's in a couple networking groups with us, but, uh, he had, uh, he had an apartment flood.

What's his name?

I probably— he probably don't want me to say his name.

Okay.

Yeah, his apartment flood.

Tell you later.

Um, And, uh, the, the apartment managers didn't do anything about it. It wasn't a big deal. It was just the laundry machine overflowed, um, water hit a couple, you know, cabinets, baseboards all throughout the house. They didn't do anything. But after a— in their mind, they looked, and after a couple weeks everything looked fine.

Yeah.

Right on the outside, it felt dry on the areas exposed to the air. It was dry, but even with my moisture meter, I knew it was dry. But because they never took those proper initial steps, I knew the place was filled with mold. It's just after 10 years of doing it, if you went and looked at it, you'd say this is pristine, this is perfect. But I just knew that it was—

It was hiding somewhere.

It was covered in it. I knew it was just because it was super soaking wet and that water never had a place to go. So eventually— it only takes a minimum of 24 to 48 hours for mold to grow. Especially down here in Texas. It doesn't—

Oh yeah, it's air saturated.

Yeah, if we're in Arizona, I wouldn't have a job. Yeah, people just open their window and call it a day. Yeah, but because it's because of where we live, the humidity, it's not just going to go away. Yeah, that's why there are so many companies like, man, like I said. But this guy's house, they, they waited a long time, and eventually I popped off one baseboard, and sure enough, the whole house, every baseboard was completely covered in this stuff. Um, and that could have been solved just by— and we deal with this with the people who rent in apartments all the time.

Oh yeah.

We go to a lot of these jobs.

Look, I mean, like, anything you can tell me about an apartment, it wouldn't surprise me. Yeah, right. Like, those guys don't want to pay for it, and I don't blame them. They don't want to pay for anything.

For sure. They got their maintenance guys.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, that's kind of what happened. Uh, we figured out that it was covered in mold. we were about to get a mold test, and right before we did, they moved on to a new unit, which we do that all the time. Sure. Where we go to places, do an inspection, okay, you gotta do this, and they move into a new spot. And I'm sure they just put kills over the mold or something.

Yeah, well, and they— a lot of people do think that bleach is just gonna kill it.

Yeah, bleach is almost 90% water. Yeah, that's, that's the main thing that makes mold grow.

So, but I mean, like, okay, so I'm glad, I'm glad you brought that up because I remember Harvey when it flooded so bad here?

Uh, we all do.

And like everyone was leaching the inside of their houses.

Yes, they were.

Because they're trying to DIY mold remediation.

Yeah, for sure.

Because they were— because everyone had it and everyone got flooded.

Yep.

Like the companies couldn't keep up. Were you guys— you guys— were you guys— you guys were in business then?

Yep. Okay.

Oh, no. I was doing what I was doing.

You were doing what you were doing.

I started my business 3 years ago, so, like, right during the freeze.

So, so you then you probably remember, I mean, like, people were getting gouged.

Oh, yeah. For bleach.

Well, for bleach, but just for, like, service.

Anything.

Yeah. Anything.

Anything.

And, and, like, it was, it was frustrating because, like, I know, like, one, like, you can kill some mold with bleach. Like, and it will kill some mold.

Yeah.

It's not going to remedy the issues in the house unless you deal with the moisture problems and everything else that goes with it, right? To basically cut it off at the root. You know, like you can kill some mold for sure, but like—

There's, there's a, there's a place where common sense makes all the, you know, that's where it has its place in this. Like if I have some white seats or something, I'm gonna put bleach on it to get rid of mold that's potentially on it, right? If you're spraying down your house with it and it's covered mold, that's, that's gonna have some effects that you're not gonna want, you know, down the line for sure.

You're almost making it stronger.

I mean, yeah, I mean, and what happens, yeah, you a lot of times you'll kill the color. And, and if it, like I said, if it's got its little roots in the sheetrock, um, that can be where it's really bad. Now, a lot of reason why people hire companies like ours is because mold's really easy to spread too. And unless you have perfect— I mean, most of what I do If I'm cut— if I'm doing a severe mold job and it's only really 2 square feet of drywall I'm removing, um, you're gonna see me going into a house and doing 8 to 10 hours of plastic before we start. You know, everything's completely sealed off. We have to

have a negative air pressure environment, meaning anytime we enter our containment, air is rushing in.

Yeah.

So nothing's spreading out, and it has to be precise. All the vents have to be sealed off because when you mess with mold too, Um, it produces mold spores. It has like—

Like when you like hit it or—

Yeah, when you had— when you had agitated at all, it has a defense mechanism. It wants to make more mold babies, like I was saying earlier. So it's real— it's realizing, oh no, I'm about to get taken out, let me shoot out some mold babies.

So mold is of the aggressive sexual nature?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it's, uh, it's not the girl you want to date. Yeah, yeah.

Wow. So I— so what would you say? Because I know everybody around here, I, I think the most common thing is like, oh, we had, we had a flood or, or whatever, right? Which happens all the time down here, right? Except last summer. Um, tell me about it. But what, what are the— I'm sure y'all are busy through the summer because stuff happens. What is— what would you say the most common thing that you get called out for is?

Summer, for sure, ACs, you know.

Oh, ACs overflowing? Working very closely with AC Is that typically like a clogged drain line?

Clogged drain line, AC condensates, um, just sweating, you know. Um, it really adds up because it's— it, everything kind of adds together. If the attic is too hot, then things start sweating, and because this starts sweating, this starts happening. It's almost like, you know, you'll hear a personal trainer, if you have a bad ankle, you may notice the other knee is bad. Yeah, this hip is bad, and it'll kind of work its way up. Yeah, I feel like same thing with houses, you know. If you have a couple things wrong, it's just a compounding effect until eventually I'm, I'm there.

Until you meet me.

Yeah, right. You do— you go enough, you— if you wait and don't call enough people on the homeowner show, you will see me.

Yeah, right. Well, I think that's okay. Sidestep for just a minute.

I forgot your question. Sorry about that.

No, that— no, I'll come back to it, but Why, why won't people just have their AC guy out on a maintenance plan? Make sure that that stuff is taken care of. Like, it isn't— it is way cheaper, y'all.

I, I know why. If you want to know the answer, well, please inform all of us. I— this is, this is my opinion. Sure. It is because, because like everyone knows that if your AC goes out, you're looking at what?

Oh, it's like $5,000 to $10,000 without even blinking.

Without even blinking an eye. Yeah. Yeah. So most people tend to treat AC guys kinda like used car salesmen because they, they know that where they make their money is on those $5,000 to $10,000 repair jobs. Sure. And so they, they look at them as kinda like charlatans. Sure. And then, and like, and you and you, we all know enough of them that that's not the case. Right? No. I mean, like, there's, they're out there. But, like, absolutely, there's enough good ones out there that you can find a good one and, and they'll get you taken care of.

But the truth of the matter is, if you're doing a maintenance plan and getting someone out there twice a year, they're actually gonna prevent those things from happening by just making sure that things are taken care of.

100%. The problem is perception.

I agree with that.

There's, there's been enough bad actors in the AC field that they've, they've kind of spoiled the pond.

Right.

For, for other guys who are trying to do an honest business. And so, like, those, those guys that have maintenance plans that are, are trying to, like, maintain people's systems and point out things to them to make their systems last longer. You know, unless for the— I mean, and let's, let's be honest. Most homeowners, again, the reason we do the show is, like, like, I, I would, I would speculate, like, 85% of homeowners are just completely uneducated as to how their home even operates and, and works and functions.

Right.

And, and is maintained. And, and which is why some people run into really expensive problems. And so when you, when you have something like a maintenance program from an AC company where they're like, hey, just pay us this amount of money, we'll come out once a quarter, we'll check everything out, people are like, oh, that's a complete scam.

Yeah.

Like, that, that's the— it's not.

Right.

It's probably not. But, like, people's perception is it is.

Right. And I get that. I think I think the, uh, the question, like, you're, you're sitting here. So my question was, what is the most common thing that you wind up doing, doing remediation on? And it's like you said, yeah, you said AC is, is a huge one.

AC's a big one.

And, and so, uh-huh, my contention there is, what is the, the fix So that, that doesn't happen to me.

Well, you gotta keep in mind we had a heck of a summer just now.

We did. Yeah, no, it was—

you guys, you guys were pretty busy, I'd imagine.

Yeah, the 105 degrees definitely helps things.

Which, I mean, seems counterintuitive, right? Because we didn't have any rain.

Right. No, it does seem counterintuitive. Um, and also just the more plumbing's going on, the more water is moving around, the more likely that there's a water damage situation that could happen. More kids are home. Yeah, all the sinks and showers are getting used, you know, um, it's just more likely something can happen.

Well, and with that heat, you're gonna get dry rot, you're gonna do all kinds of stuff that winds up happening, right?

And then you get the animals that want to come in.

Yeah, yeah, chew on stuff. That's always fun.

We get the raccoons chewing through PEX pipe every once in a while. They, they're good at it.

Oh, they're still good at it. Well, so like, so I mean, to, to your point, we, we had one not long ago It was a, it was a couple that had moved down from up north and they bought a house that had been remodeled with PEX because most, most homes are not plumbed with PEX, right, around here. I mean, like, they can be refurbed with PEX, but most homes—

Usually on the repipes.

Yeah, the repipes are done with PEX. New— I don't know if new builds are doing PEX yet.

Almost all new builds are doing PEX.

I would, I would think so.

They're having a thing in the garage too where you can shut off. Yeah, you know, it's like an electrical box almost. Right. With all the plumbing. That's smart.

It's really cool. Yeah. No. I like those a lot. But this couple, the house had been replumbed with PEX, and they'd had a rodent in the attic, and it had chewed on the PEX. And it didn't get quite all the way through, but it just got kinda down to that membrane. And it— the membrane started to leak.

Yeah.

And it just started pooling in the ceiling of the bathroom. And they didn't know until, like, 2 months later when they had, like, this giant bubble That had accumulated, you know, and then they had a moisture problem. And, and you know what I mean? It's, it's usually not something that just happens really quick.

Not always. I will say the quick ones, as, as shitty as it is— am I allowed to cuss on here? Sorry.

We'll let that one go.

Too late. As bad as it is, as bad as it is, um, to have your whole house flood in water, those quick sudden leaks I think are way better and the slope.

I would agree, man.

Over time, you know, there's a lot of jobs—

Because you can lie to yourself on the small ones, you know, it's not really happening.

They can really go on behind your back for a while too. And you maybe you open up a wall and you say, oh, okay, all these 2x4s are mulched, everything's done. We have structural damage now. Yeah. Versus having to just replace a couple boards of sheetrock, right? Yeah. Um, so those are definitely way worse. We see a lot where, you know, someone will nail something into a wall It goes into the pipe. Oh yeah.

And it's flushed.

Oh man. And it— what happens is like 4 or 5 years, it's just gotta wait until it rusts just enough into where a leak of water will start coming out. And it's from what a handyman did 7 years ago hanging up a picture, you know. So yeah, those slow leaks, they're a lot worse. They're what cause the most damage in people's homes.

It's what gets people the most sick too with all the mold issues because it's easier for it to accumulate over time.

Yeah.

Yeah. And, uh, we get a lot of, you know, calls just because people are like, look, I've been sick for a year. Oh man, I'm thinking it's not allergies anymore. Yeah.

Yeah. All right, so I have a technical question, but before I ask the technical question, have you seen the King of the Hill episode on the mold remediation?

I have not.

Oh, it's so good.

What?

It's so good.

Just kind of started getting back into King of the Hill.

It's— if you haven't seen it, look it up. It is so funny. I mean, absolutely gonna check it out. Yeah, it's— I mean, because it kind of gets into like insurance scams. It was— it was kind of—

The show was good. So good for all that stuff, you know, as a contractor watching it now. It's awesome.

Yeah. Well, you know, they're fixing to do like a revival of it.

Really? Yeah.

Well, the guy that played Dale— yeah, have you guys both watched it? Sure. The guy that played Dale just passed away. Oh, really? Boomhauer passed away? Was it? No, because the creator Mike Judge. Mike Judge.

He did the voice of Boomhauer.

Okay. So Dale passed away.

The guy that did the voice of Dale passed away. And so I think they're kind of trying to figure out what to do with that. But they're doing another—

We need it.

A revival. Yeah, we do. Yeah. So good.

That's a good one.

But they have a mold episode, and if you haven't seen it, definitely check it out. Yeah. The technical question I want, because I use a moisture meter all the time. Um, at what point, at what percentage— because I know that's how moisture meters read out, right? At what percentage am I in trouble?

Um, well, so I think the main important thing, obviously, if you're getting real highs in the 20s, 30s, something like that, that matters. But the most important thing is you want to take a base reading first.

What's a base reading?

So if we know this wall is affected with water, we want to check a wall that we know is not affected.

Oh, so like to get like a control?

Yep.

I got you.

Just because, you know, House A, it's 8%, doesn't mean House B, it's going to be the same.

Gotcha.

And you may do a couple things wrong because, hey, that house is just, you know, it's 70 years older.

Man, that's the same thing. That's the same thing with people that are like, I set my, I set my air conditioner at 73 degrees. You're like, 73? I set it at like 78. And you're like, nah, man, you're stupid. It's like, it actually feels the same in both houses.

Let me tell you what, if you set it at 78, you're a monster.

I agree, I agree. I'm just saying— Yeah, you said 78.

I, I was just—

I was making it— I was making it obscure, right? But like, the, the same is true. Like, it's not going to be the same from house to house, even if it's on the same, like, the same street, right? It's not going to be the same. So I get it, you got to have that.

Okay, so you got to have that baseline. What we're looking for is like relative Yeah, I guess moisture.

Yeah, and that, that's just, that's relative moisture, right? Um, obviously if the whole house— I've gone to houses where everything's reading 20%.

Oh gosh.

And I'm like, what in the world's going on? But there's no mold, everything's fine.

How is that possible?

They're older homes, that's how.

Really?

Yeah, '30s, '40s, you know, man. Like, I—

so like, it was really tough for me. Like, I start getting concerned when I start seeing like 13, 14, 15%. Um, on anything. Yeah, you know. Yeah, but like, so like 20%, you're like looking at it, you've seen some that are 20% and no mold? Yep. That's crazy.

Yeah, and it depends because sometimes at other jobs I'm like, 20%, that's what, you know, we have. Yeah, that's soaking wet another 2 days. Um, and then sometimes it's not, you know. Sometimes you go to a house and the carpet's never had any water on it, it's just very old, and it's reading super wet throughout the whole thing, you know. That's why—

and I didn't even think about the carpet.

Yeah, same thing, same thing. Carpet will do the same thing. And, you know, I'll look underneath it, everything's dried, never been an issue, but it'll just sometimes kind of read higher. And I, I think with it, just there's a place for common sense to be involved.

Yeah, you know. Um, so, so like with, with carpet, but there's no set number. Okay, okay, that's fair. So on carpet though, is it, is it typically going to be the carpet or is it going to be like the padding?

Uh, yeah, you want to check both. Yeah, but if we're— if we're—

I mean, like, where's mold more likely going to grow?

Um, oh man, if I'm talking about mold and carpet, I don't— you know, it's easy. It's crazy easy. Anytime we're doing a mold job, we really just throw away all the carpet almost every time, just because it's such— it holds it all in, you know. And you really— you can do everything you want. You can get every carpet cleaner. I could fog it and clean it and put every antimicrobial on it, but that carpet, if you have a mold issue In the carpet. Yeah, in the carpet.

Let's be honest, you wanted new carpet anyway.

Yeah, you wanted new carpet.

If insurance is going to be involved, let them give you new carpet.

And that is the tricky thing is insurance doesn't really cover mold remediation in Texas. It's not covered. They cover sudden water losses. But there's a good reason too. People got real predatory in my industry 20 years ago when the mold boom first kind of started. A lot of— I mean, I wasn't around.

Well, that was, that was the whole point of that King of the Hill episode.

Oh yeah?

Was predatory mold insurance.

How have I not seen this?

I don't know. Like, that's the whole thing. It's like what it was. They, they just, they just keep, they, they keep seeing like, oh, we found more. Oh, we found more. Oh, we found more. Oh, we found more. We got to do more. We got to do more. And they just keep charging the insurance company.

It was the Wild West, man. You could have a little spot a mold like this big and, you know, tell people, you got some mold. People were scared. We gotta gut the entire house. Yeah. And it just makes no sense. Wow. That'll be $200K, please. Oh my gosh. Just stupid stuff.

Well, like, but that's, that's kind of the way, I mean, like, they were used, they were playing the same game that the medical industry plays. Right? Exactly. It's like, oh, knee replacement, $300,000.

It is the exact same.

Oh, you're playing cash?

$5,000. Yeah. Right. It's the exact same. It's like, well, what?

Like, yeah, yeah. And they still deal with floods and stuff like that, but they really kind of have regulated everything. They use Xactimate now for everything.

So everyone's like— Xactimate?

That's kind of just a program that a lot of, I guess, insurance companies will use for people like, uh, what I do. It's almost they have like set prices for everything. Okay. You can charge more or not, but expect to get pushed back.

So are you, are you guys still able to get Insurance claims?

Yeah, so most flood jobs that we do that are sudden occurrences, yeah, those are insurance jobs.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, we usually, we sit down to see if it makes sense to start a claim, you know, how much is this job going to cost with us and the reconstruction? Yeah, even though we don't do the reconstruction, we kind of want to have it all figured out still. How much is it going to cost for those 2? What's your deductible? Does it make sense to go through insurance and raise your rates if it's only a couple hundred bucks more in deductible total? Probably not.

Yeah.

So we try to sit down with people and try to figure out, does this make sense to do— go this route or this route? Um, and same, that's, that's how we determine if we need a mold test. You know, if I hear the word sick at all, we're getting a mold test. Um, because nothing I can do will be able to find that mold. My moisture meters, my thermals, it's, you know, it's in the microns. You're not gonna be able to see it with your eyes, right? So at that point, everything I say or any other contractor says about that mold is just nonsense until we get a lab report. So that's usually— that's kind of what that important first step is when sitting down is like, all right, where are we going? What do we

want to do? And sometimes you get your guys that are like, just give me a piece of paper.

I don't know.

Yeah, yeah, you know. So with, with all these like bacterial microns in the air, I mean, how— I, I'm thinking of like these new filtration systems that they're putting like air conditioning, like the UV filtration systems. Like, how, how helpful is something like that? They're fantastic. For, I mean, for what?

Yeah.

For preventing what you're dealing with.

Yeah. You still gotta go through the process first. So this is what I notice. Uh, and, you know, they do work. They work really good. But I think some AC companies need to be careful about promising too much, you know?

Sure.

Like, every— once we put these in, all the mold is gone and you're done. Really? I mean, that's, that's not true unless you're doing a full clean of the ducting. You're testing the house.

Nothing.

You don't really know anything about the mold until you test it before and after, right, in the lab. That's the only way to know. So anyone saying this will get rid of mold, this won't get rid of mold, unless you're going through lab tests and going through it the right way, no one knows. Um, but they help a lot. I think it helps. Usually anytime we finish a job, we want to get our AC guys to come in, and we try to work with our AC guys a little differently compared to other companies. Yeah, we do do it a little different. Um, it's more, it's more complicated sometimes. It takes twice as long, but you know, we do it the right way. Um, but yeah, we always try to get the AC guys

at the end to install all the UV lights, get all that stuff in. And usually once we're done, we're all totally wrapped up, they never see us again for mold. So we don't get a whole lot of recurring customers, unfortunately. But sure, I'm almost okay with it.

But I mean, that's, that is, that is the business, right? I mean, like, you, you don't want No. If you do your job well, you shouldn't see them again.

Yeah. People say it all the time. Thank you so much, but I never wanna see you again, and I'm perfectly fine with that.

Yeah, exactly. So let me ask this question. How, how helpful are dehumidifiers in, in where we live? I mean, where we—

They're great for guitars.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And cigars too. Um, right. So, like, We, we moved out of a home that, I mean, we had an Ecobee, uh, thermostat and it reads humidity too.

Yeah. And it does?

Yeah. I mean, I never used that function. It's relative. I mean, it, it's not, it's a ballpark. Yeah. I mean, it, it kind of takes—

I'm okay with ballpark. I just didn't even know it did it.

Yeah. It, it, yeah, it does. So if you look, there's like a, there's like a little water drop and then a number on your thermostat and that's what it is. Okay. So That, that number was always really high at the house that we lived in. When I say really high, it was like getting up to like 60, 65, that type of rate above what I would consider to be normal. And what I was reading online was normal too. So you really want between 40 and 60. Exactly. So we, we got a dehumidifier and that number—

Real quick, that's the number for like around here. Yeah. Anywhere else? I mean, because like we're in like a very humid—

Right.

Anywhere else, what, like if I was living like in Ohio, like what should I expect to see? That's like—

Um, just, just from everything I know, if you're in like the 40 to 60% range, uh, you're just not likely to have a big mold issue or—

Okay.

Have things that cause secondary damage. I mean, it's, it's relatively kind of low, 55%. you can—

55 and under.

Yeah, 55 and under. At that point, the water's kind of gonna get into the air. Um, and that's, that's really what most my job is, is for me to pull moisture out of materials, we have to dry the air. If the air is completely saturated with water, which happens a lot after— if you check right after a flood, you check the humidity levels in the house, you'll see 90%, you know. And if it's at 99%, that means the water— the air is completely full of water molecules and can't hold more. So until you actually start removing moisture from the air, moisture won't leave any materials at all.

Yeah, so I guess— I mean, no, no, I think that, that, that's really helpful because it still plays into the question. Like, yeah, I mean, so what we did, and we were actually finding that we had some, some moisture in a couple places, but Um, what we wound up doing is we got the dehumidifier, and dude, like, we were like having to dump our dehumidifier like daily.

Yeah, that stuff sucks.

And so, yeah, it does, but I— we found it to be helpful in just kind of keeping that overall number down in our home. But is that something that people around here should be interested in investing in?

For sure. Yeah. And you know, it does depend on your house. If you have a couple problem areas in your house. And, you know, go to Home Depot and get one of those little tiny, you know, just dump-out humidifiers. It's better than nothing. They also install them into the attics now. They do.

They do put them in, which is great because at that point you have a drain line that you don't have to ever dump anything.

You don't have to ever worry about it. Yeah, good. It has a certain shutoff, so after this sort of humidity, it'll, you know, shut off. That way it's not damaging things because you could dry it out too much, you know, right? If you dry out a house too much, you could ruin all the floors, right, and all anything inside of it. So you got to be careful. There is a fine line, right? And I think that's why people say 40/60, because they'll put these crazy dehumidifiers in that will just never stop.

Yeah.

And before you know it, all your wood's cracking, everything's shrinking, you know? Sure. Yeah. So there, there's a little bit of a line. Okay. But yeah, I think dehumidifiers in Texas, yeah, for sure, dude.

Not a bad thing.

Yeah, not a bad thing. Absolutely. Well, I got one.

Yeah, I mean, it seemed to be good for us. I mean, we definitely got our use out of it. I mean, we— right, we bought a good one.

I mean, I do like— I have put it in my house too, and honestly, you know, it did mess up my throat. I— sure, when I have visited some other states like Colorado or something like that, I'm taking cough drops the whole time. Yeah, because the humidity dries you out. It completely dries you out.

I grew up in West Texas. Okay. And it's— I mean, that makes Yeah. Like, the, the humidity levels there are like 10%, right? I mean, it's super, super, super dry in that area. And so, like, but I know a lot of people, they, they live in that area and, yeah, they get, they get nosebleeds a lot or they, you know, their lips are dried out all the time.

I mean, I was putting on ChapStick all every day, 3 times a day. It was nuts.

Well, I mean, I legitimately, and, and I don't say this to be, to be rude or anything, but you look at a, at a person that lives in West Texas who's 80 years old, and you compare it to someone who's lived in Houston for their entire life and they're 80 years old and their wrinkle level is different. Yeah, like they just look different. Yeah, like they— I mean, the ones in those low humidity areas, they're a little bit dry. Yeah, they're a little dry and wrinkly.

Yeah, look like smokers.

Yeah, a little bit. And it's not— I mean, and legitimately it's just because of the environment, you know. So is that why you moved here? Yeah, that's what it was. Yeah, to make me look pretty. Yep. It hadn't worked yet. I hadn't been here long enough.

Hang in there, buddy.

Yeah, gotta move a little closer.

I don't, I don't know what your excuse is, Craig.

Genetics?

Oh, I don't know about that. I'm not telling your mom that.

Well, that's right. You can take it up with her. That's why I said it.

I will not. I will not. I've, I've done that once. I will not do it again. Well, okay, so I mean, we, we've talked about a number of things, but like, is there anything— if, if, I mean, you, you have your opportunity right now to talk to homeowners, like, is there anything that you would tell them, hey, think about this, or do this, or don't do that? What I mean—

Or pay attention.

Yeah, pay attention to this. What advice do you have?

Yeah, I mean, don't be afraid to go in your attic for sure.

Oh, I would say that is a big deal. Most people do not want to go into their attic. No.

Take a look, you know, take a look around.

Um, what am I looking for?

Yeah, um, man, there's so many signs. Usually I definitely— he could speak to this, uh, when you see, uh, rodents, there's usually a water thing, or if there's a water thing, there's rodents not far behind. I feel like the two are pretty connected.

They are.

Yeah, they are for sure. Um, so you're seeing a bunch of rat poop, there's a good one. Um, your water pressure is low.

Well, not only that, I mean, like, if you're seeing, if you're seeing rodent fecal matter, yes, that can carry back like mold and bacteria. Yeah. And, and be a, a food source for those things as well.

Yeah. I'm not sure if I've seen mold on poop yet.

I've seen mold around poop.

Right. I see what you're saying. Yeah. But it excretes bacteria, which once that's on the insulation, now the insulation can carry it. Exactly. Yeah. Looking for rodents, stuff like that. Um, yeah, definitely don't be afraid to check out your, your attic. Um, check your filter. When you take off your filters, look inside your ducts. You know, if you're seeing mold in your air return, that means there's probably mold going throughout your entire house, right?

Yeah.

So once you have mold in the AC, man, it's a little late. Not saying that nothing can be done, but, um, and once again, sorry, AC company, not any kind of anybody that says I can do an AC cleaning with mold I just, I don't trust it. I don't completely trust it.

So, like, so, I mean, if you could real quick, because I've seen this pop up quite a bit lately, like these duct cleaning services.

Yes. The duct cleaning.

That's what exactly I'm talking about. And they're claiming— and duct cleaning services that claim that they can deal with mold. So, like, what are, what are they doing that they're saying that they can deal with mold?

I think it's a lot of just—

They're putting bleach on a brush and running it through the ducts?

No. It's a lot of just brushes. It's just brushes.

It's just brushes. It's just getting rid of the dust I mean, I'm sure there's other companies that are doing more than that.

Yeah, and there's really good ways of doing it too. They have, you know, brand new systems where you have to seal everything off and it's got a vacuum as you're brushing everything. But once again, just getting going with a paper towel or with a brush or whatever you're doing and just wiping off all that dust doesn't get rid of the mold. Um, and it's probably why they're not recommending mold tests after they're doing it, you know, right? They know they're gonna fail.

So let me ask you this, like, say you've got a, a duct cleaning company and you're pumping like bleach or concrobium through, through the system, like, is that gonna be helpful? So, um, you know, if I'm, I'm, I'm not trying to give away any industry secrets, but I'm just wondering if there's like duct cleaning services that are offering like upgrades or— I, I, I don't know.

It's— and I, I know I hate saying this, but everything's a case-by-case basis. It really is.

Oh no, that's fine.

Yeah, it depends on the spore levels, you know, and how— it's just like how they do the— just how you take readings on wood. They check the outside levels. What are the outside mold levels? Because that— they don't have a set amount in the States to say this is the bad amount of mold. They test it to outside levels and then they compare it to that. So that, that's kind of how they know. Um, what was the question? Sorry.

No, no, I was, I was asking if there's, if there's duct cleaning services and they're running like bleach or Concrobium, right?

And so If, if the, uh, protocol or the mold test says, okay, we might have a small issue, just have an AC guy come take a look, and it seems minuscule and the levels are below safe, then yeah, it could work. Or if it's slightly above, then it might do just enough. All we want to do is get below levels. Um, we can't ask for much more than that, um, because the second you open the door, it's gonna equal out anyway, right?

Yeah.

So all you can ask is for, you know, outdoor levels. So yeah, there's a time and place for it. Um, it just sucks that all these things, it really depends. It really depends.

Sure, yeah.

I always recommend going through, if you're worried about it and you're worried about things happening or spreading or causing more damage, to just go through the right steps, um, and get a mold test.

Yeah.

Ideally, we want to come in way before that. We want to come in when they first have the leaks so they don't have to go that route, because sometimes you can have a leak and I'm popping off a baseboard, spraying it putting in a dehu for 2 days and we're calling it a day. You may— maybe you put the baseboard back and that's it. Yeah. Versus if you wait on it, going through the mold situation, um, it could be way different. It's a lot more intense. Um, you want to avoid it if you can, but once you're there, you want to do it the right way because if you mess it up, all you can do is cause more damage down the line.

Yeah, defer it and push it further on down the road.

Yeah, yeah.

Is that what you're doing?

Yeah, yeah. Don't push it down. Anytime you're dealing with water damage in Houston And don't push it down the road. It only gets more expensive.

So can it— I mean, like, one of the things I, I know we talked about carpet earlier, and I mean, if you, if you don't know, we've been doing this for like almost an hour and 15 minutes. Um, let's just see, you didn't think you had enough in the tank, did you? But like, what about like wood floors when they get wet? Um, because I know like you can't see the underside.

So there's a couple different ways to dry wood floors. You know, we can get mats, we can do other things. Um, this is what I found. If it's upstairs, really easy. It's a lot easier if it's sitting on subflooring. Once we're glued to concrete, different story. Totally different story. You're really mostly— if you're— it's most likely not gonna save it, you know. And once that buckling starts happening, for it to go back down is really hard. Once that— once your floors start buckling from water damage, um, to really get that to go back down. It's really hard, you know. It— but once again, depends on the flooring. If you got engineered wood floors, you know, the pressed-together stuff, it's not going to go back to normal. If you got real wood,

you know, solid wood floors, um, you have more of a chance, you know.

Oh, you can dry them out and possibly—

You have more of a chance. I have dried out— I've dried out homes full of wood flooring, and then other times, you know, had my equipment in there for weeks and not made it a bunch, you know. Yeah. Um, so it depends. It depends on how much glue they want to slap on that wood, you know, depends on the kind of wood. Yeah, I, I know I keep throwing that answer out there, but no, no, no, like it is. Yeah.

Well, so to me that raises a question of like, what's, what's the most mold-resistant flooring you can put in your home?

Um, I mean, there's obviously that rubber vinyl stuff. Really? Yeah, you know, the where it's just basically waterproof vinyl. You can completely seal the outside of it. Oh, but the obvious answer is tile.

I was just gonna say tile, right? Yeah, sure. Okay.

Tile's the best. Nothing usually— unless they did a real bad tile job, a lot of times if you have a flood, you don't even have to remove it, you know. If they did a good job with the grout and putting everything crisscross right, um, a lot of times you don't even have to take out the tile. So tile's awesome. I love tile, especially the wood tile, you know, the one— oh, they look great— tile that looks like wood flooring. Yeah. Oh yeah, I love that stuff.

We did our, we did our, uh, our master bath shower in wood tile. And a lot of people walk in and they're like, well, how do you keep that from rotting? And I'm like, because it's not wood.

Yeah, so it's that good, huh?

Oh yeah, it looks awesome.

I've seen where people, they get rid of the grout and they just put tile on tile on that wood tile and it looks real good. It looks like solid.

Yeah, you— I mean, the issue you run up against, like exactly what you're talking about, is moisture getting through that. Yeah, you know, I mean, like it's, it's probably— it looks great.

It does look great.

And it will crack easier, but for sure, you know. So, because we're, we're, uh, we're actually— we, we, we tried putting tile on the second floor in some areas and it didn't go well. Yeah, fixing after— like, it lasted 7 years.

Harder on subfloor.

Yeah, it just cracks easier, especially if you're doing like long plank. And yeah, like, it's definitely, you know, you need smaller stuff if you're gonna do stuff upstairs, right? We learned that the hard way. Um, we just like the way it looked, right? Yeah, it's like we wanted it, so we got it.

And all these, all these things depend on obviously the kind of water You know, there's clean water like that's from your sink, and then anything that's sewage or rain or anything coming from outside the house.

Yeah.

Or that's a backup something, obviously anything that water touches, it's so grossly contaminated. Don't— we don't want to take a chance. We just want to take it out and replace it.

Yeah.

That's just the move to do with that. So if you have a sewage backup and that soaks up your floors, you don't want to dry and clean that out. That is carrying some very harmful, disgusting bacteria. And it's anytime, if you ever do have a humidity issue, there's so much bacteria and, you know, gross contamination in there that just makes it so much easier for the mold to grow in the future.

Yeah.

So depends on the kind of water too.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Um, and any, anything else, Kevin?

No, I mean, I was just thinking, you know, that's probably a good place to kind of, kind of move on to the next Section, which we haven't done in a long time. We haven't done in a long time. You almost forgot about it, didn't you?

Well, I've obviously— I've never been able to remember the questions themselves.

So you're already kind of behind. But we have to do— we have to do the thing, which is normal. We have to do the thing that we do with all of our first-time guests.

Okay.

And that is very simply called the Final Four.

The Final Four. That's right. Was that like a laugh track? I think so. Let's see what we can find here. There we go. The final four. That was so.

It was kind of like. All right. Well, it's very simple, but this is the four questions that we ask each and every one of our guests, which we did not warn him about. We did not on purpose. I thought about it, but I chose. not to. All right, so here we go.

Just like a regular thing.

Here's the 4 questions. We're gonna start with number 1 because that's the way questions work. You start with the first one. That would be weird if we didn't. So the first question is this: what is the must-have tool you won't leave your house without?

Um, that's my do-it-all-in-one, you know, little $2,000 moisture meter, hydrometer, thermal mix.

Ooh.

Yeah, so I just, instead of, you know, looking like Batman walking in the house with 4 different tools, I was like, if it— there's got to be one expensive thing that does all these. So yeah, yeah, so I can test the humidity, moisture, and take thermal pictures just with this little thing.

Oh, that's cool.

My little fanny pack, you know, that I carry.

It takes thermal pictures?

Yeah, it takes thermals, humidity, and moisture readings.

That's cool.

It's not cheap.

What? No.

I'm scared of dropping it all the time, but, uh, that's it. Yeah, I mean, for my job, that's fine.

No one else gets to play with that, right?

Yeah, yeah.

No, it's good. I really like it. All right, second question is this: what's a job you walked away from? Now, I, I— we all always— it's, it's frustrating for most people, probably, for us to continue to put this caveat in here, but it was our fault to begin with. What we meant by this question was, what's like a project around your house you started and you just kind of quit, but Wait, a job I walked away from? But yeah, so it's really— we wanted to ask the question, what's a project you started and you walked away from? You had to call in the professional. However, okay, we as morons asked the question the first time, we worded it poorly. What's a job you walked away from?

And we're not changing it. So what the question is, what's a job you walked away from? And you can take that however you want to.

Hold on, hold on. I'm, I'm actually genuinely concerned about the investigative techniques of these. So like they made you move your equipment? Uh huh.

Why? I don't know. Well, the customer just was like, "I don't care.

I'm dealing with other stuff right now." But I would imagine the police would have been like, "No, everything needs to stay in place till we finish this investigation." No, there's little you know. Was it like a cut and dry? Like we know exactly who shot this guy. Well, they had their eye.

That makes way more sense. One of these. neighborhoods. There's a guy that owns a big carpet cleaning company, actually. But it's one of these neighborhoods in Houston where they're— he did. It's one there. I don't think he was the one that died. It was one of those gentrifying Houston neighborhoods. You see million dollar home next to bars on the window.

Oh, yeah.

So one of those neighborhoods. The other one that we actually turned down was Just, you know, we get— we for some reason get a lot of hoarding orders call us. I don't know why. It's, uh, their house is covered in poop and fecal matter and, you know, a thousand years of newspapers. Um, but they have a little leak and they're like, can you fix that? And you're just kind of looking around like, lady, you have bigger problems. Stuff to figure out.

We know a guy.

Yeah, we do know a guy. We know a guy.

Yeah, but a couple of guys. Yeah, yeah. There was one job where they just— it was— this house was bizarre. I don't know how anyone lived in it. It looks like they gutted half of it, and they said, yeah, we gutted that half about 30 years ago. We just haven't gotten back to it.

Jeez.

And there's still so much mold covering it. And they called me— the whole place was covered in mold— and they called me to— they really didn't like one particular spot of mold, and they asked me to cut through it. But when I was cutting it out, they didn't want me to do any of the right stuff. They just wanted me to clear— I would literally be cutting through mold and they just wanted that little part out. And I'm just like, it's, it's 50, it's 100 square feet solid black. Oh, you know, I didn't walk in there without a mask and clothes just for the sale.

Yeah.

Um, so they said, can you do that? I'm like, I just had to tell them no, I cannot in good conscience do that. You know, I'm not going to make things better. Yeah. Um, I don't want to sell someone something if I'm not making it better. Like, what are we doing here?

Yeah.

Um, so no, I did have to turn that one down. Um, and they were a little upset at me, but, um, luckily I didn't get a bad review out of it. They just left me alone. But, uh, yeah, I did have to turn that down because—

Must not have been my friend over in Kingwood. No, no, no, no, no, no.

All right, next question. How do you wind down at the end of a long day?

Oh boy. Um, my business has been good. Got a boat last year, that's been keeping me busy.

Oh nice.

That's been real nice.

Uh, what kind of boat?

I got a Rinker Captiva, kind of an old '90s one.

Okay.

Got the teal and pink. That's— my wife picked the colors. That's what based everything actually. I had all these good boats in line, she's like, I like the colors on that one, so we got that one.

There you go.

Um, I had a funny— when I, I never had a boat before, so I was trying to figure it out. I was wanting to say what y'all were talking about earlier about the professional coming to people's houses. I got stuck somewhere and I had to call one of those boat towing people to come to my thing, and I thought the boat was messed up, and he just like hit one button, turned it on for me. I had to pay him $200. Oh no, but it was worth it, you know. I had to get out of there.

Yeah, the boat wasn't ruined, right?

Yeah, he just— but yeah, after a long day, I like doing that.

Um, so where do you drive it mostly?

Lake Conroe.

Lake Conroe?

And video games. I like video games, you know.

I'd What game you playing right now?

Um, I mostly stick to, you know, the 2Ks, the Maddens, you know.

Oh, you have sports? Okay.

Yeah, mostly stuff like that. Every once in a while I'll play a, you know, like, I gotta be careful though. I get real addicted to that stuff. So I get like 1 or 2 games a year. That's when I'm allowed.

Okay.

I tried playing Red Dead Redemption 2. That was a cowboy game.

Oh yeah, no, I'm familiar about it.

I do. Jeez, man, I was not a good person.

That game will not turn you into a good person.

Yeah, it was right when I started my business too. So it was like I quit my other job, started my business, Red Dead 2 came out, and it was just a bad time. I could have been further where I am now if it wasn't for that video.

Yeah, let me tell you something. Like, I, I enjoy video games. Yeah, I don't— I rarely play them ever. I, I was really into them when I was in college.

Yeah, but let me tell you something, I know myself, I can't play them that much. That is a cool game. Yeah, no, I mean, it's like Shakespeare, you know. It's, it's, it's a beautiful story. You know, it's just, it's just in it. You can be a cowboy. Yeah. Oh, I spent so much time just fishing on that game. Wow. 80 hours, you guys. So this is where I knew it got bad. Sorry, but this is where I knew it got bad is I was playing so much of that video game that like I saw a horse somewhere and I was like, oh, that horse looks real realistic in real life. In real life. Yeah.

And you probably thought in your brain, I can break that horse.

Yeah, it was simple things like, that tree looks good. Like, of course it looks good, Eric, it's real. It's real. You gotta stop. So once I noticed that I said that about the horse and tree all right there— yeah, those look really good, like an artist made it or something. Um, his name is God. Yeah, God, like, I guess so. Yeah, I guess I'm giving him credit, you know.

He's a good painter. He's a good painter.

But once that happened, I stopped playing. So I haven't played in a while.

So real quick, let me interject here. So I have started, and I'm not going to tell the name because I don't want people going over and checking it out just yet. I have started an Instagram account. Have you guys heard about AI art? Yes. Do you guys know about this? Yes. Nuts. Yeah. So here's the thing. I don't think a lot of people realize this. There are platforms where because you write the prompts, you own the rights to the art.

Correct.

Really?

Yes.

Oh, wow. Okay.

And so I have started an account where I'm generating all this art. And, like, it gets weird, right? Because I, I'm about to post some about Clint Eastwood, some portraits that I created of Clint Eastwood. I'll show them to you guys after the show. And, and they're crazy.

How many arms does he have?

Does he? Yeah. So I, I don't wanna give too much information away because, like, I don't want people, like, like, spamming the, the account or anything like that because I'm trying to see, I'm trying to see what the organic traffic is on stuff like this.

Is it like that dot-com bubble? Like, you better get in there and make some AI content quick.

That's what I'm, that's what I'm wondering. Yeah. That's what I'm wondering because I imagine at some point they're gonna cut it off to where you can't be using people's likenesses. Yeah. But right now you can.

Yeah. You just own the rights to Big Bird and ice skates.

Like, you got to think, like, if I'm, if I'm a painter, right, and I paint a portrait of, let's say, Princess Diana, right? Like, it's her likeness. She doesn't, she doesn't get any, or the family doesn't get any royalties, royalties from that because I created it. Right. But it's a picture of her.

Right. It's the same thing.

Yeah. And so I don't know how they're going to curtail any of this where people are using people's likenesses to create art. I'm doing it. And so, like, when I told my parents about it this afternoon, she's like, well, let's see what you can do with Dolly. Yeah. And so I made some Dolly Parton art this afternoon too.

It's definitely a little messed up, right?

It is. It is. But I'm like, okay, I want to play with it and see what happens just organically.

It's not like Photoshop hasn't been around forever either, right?

Yeah, like you can grab a picture and you can play around with it and do— yeah, absolutely. That this is just a little bit different where like all you have to do is know the language, right, to input into the AI in order to get the image that you want.

That's pretty crazy.

Um, I'll show you guys after the show. It's nuts.

What if— I mean, it's hard to notice while we're in it too, but this whole AI thing, like we're in the boom. It's kind of like how I imagine the early 2000s, right when the internet came. Like, we're kind of right here in the middle of it. It's kind of fun to appreciate sometimes.

It is fun to appreciate, but the boom was like 5 years ago. Yeah. Honestly. I mean, not like really, because—

For me, it felt more recent, I guess.

Well, no, it's because it's become more public. Yeah. And accessible.

It has accelerated in the last year. Yeah. Right. But the boom happened 5 years ago. Okay.

Big time. Yeah. Like, the people who were developing this stuff, 5, 10 years ago.

Mhmm.

And, and people will tell you all the time, like, the government has, has had this stuff.

Right. Yeah.

For years. And, and now we're just getting, like, a glimpse of it. Right? And, and so, like, it's— now you're starting to see the businesses come out of it. Right? Because you start seeing, like, ChatGPT.

Yeah.

And, and these other services where you can pay a subscription. Like, that didn't come out of nowhere.